Terminally ill woman not consulted on hospital resuscitation order

Addenbrooke's doctors were found by a high court judge to have acted in the best interests of terminally ill patient Janet Tracey. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A terminally ill woman was not consulted before a notice instructing "do not resuscitate" was placed with her medical records, a judge has found.

But the judge, Mrs Justice Nicola Davies, said failure to inform or involve 63-year-old Janet Tracey in that decision had had "minimal causative effect". The notice was cancelled five days later, after her family objected.

A second notice, which followed two days before Tracey's death at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, was put in place with the agreement of her family, who were unwilling to speak to her about it, the judge said.

Davies, who was determining disputed issues of fact, in the high court, will rule on Friday on whether the legal issues should now be considered at a judicial review hearing in February.

Tracey's family want to clarify the law over the notices, known as DNRs, and make the Department of Health maintain a national policy on the issue, rather than leave it to trusts and professional guidance.

Tracey died in March last year after breaking her neck in a car crash on 19 February. She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer earlier that month. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS foundation trust, which runs the hospital, argued that resuscitation would not have been in the best interests of Tracey, who had also developed pneumonia and needed ventilation.

The judge accepted medical and nursing evidence that Tracey and her family had been in denial over her prognosis.

Philip Havers QC, for the family, said: "There are strong concerns that exist as to the transparency and clarity regarding patients' rights in this area."

Lord Faulks QC, for the trust, said: "On the very limited findings you have made, this is not the appropriate case – if there is an appropriate case – to launch into effectively some sort of public inquiry as to what the right policy should be."

The trust said in a statement: "A high court judge has ruled that Addenbrooke's hospital doctors acted professionally and in the best interest of Mrs Tracey. In line with good practice and in full consultation with [her] and her family, a 'do not resuscitate' order was first rescinded following concerns raised by the family and then, with the family's full agreement, later reinstated.

"We sympathise with Mrs Tracey's family but it is important to recognise that [she] was very poorly, suffering from terminal lung cancer and a broken neck."

• This article was amended on 20 December 2012. The original wrongly attributed quotes from the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS foundation trust to Lord Faulks. This has been corrected

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